lovestorysad, it's one of those things you can stand and watch for a long time.

Reminds me of a show I attended in the late 1980s where a company was showing their software running on an industrial Mac computer. Yes, they really existed. The demo consisted of four parallel model railroad tracks, with switches at the ends. There was also 90° turn in all tracks just before one end. There are four engines, red, green yellow, and blue. The engines would run randomly and the system could tell which one was on which track, even if you picked it up and moved it to another location. A monitor had a graphic of the tracks and colored dots inteicated the location of each engine. The software was designed to stop an engine or switch it to another track to avoid a collision.

The first two days of the show, the software engineer sat there all day with his arms folded, while the engines ran flawlessly, never crashing. On the third day, the company president manned the booth. A couple of ours into the show, two engines collided.

@Crusty I sympathise....don'cha hate it when your preferred xmas gift is out of stock?

Have you had a look at the Digilent Analog Discovery? 2-channel 5 MHz scope, signal genny and 16-channel logic analyser in one USB box for US$219. You can get it cheaper if you are a student (I am doing a course at the moment and am trying to organise that).

Gabotronics also offer some very tasy goodies which you can build into (eg) a breadboard box. Also only 8 logic lines though, and 200K b/w, but they are very compact and have their own LCD screen (the two above need a PC):

@Susan: You have now caused a lot of marital strife at Crusty Mansion.

It took only one look at that darling LabTool USB instrument, for me to fall in love with yet another technical toy.

Well after crying did not have much effect on getting a promise of it for Christmas. A good long sulk followed by redecoration of the master bedroom did change the attitude that this could be his present this year.

However Mrs Crusty had a wicked gleam in here eye when she informed me that I would have to wait for this toy until after Christmas, as it is now OUT OF STOCK.